The present invention generally relates to data compression techniques. More particularly, the present invention relates to a compression technique for compressing formatted code obtained from a remote control apparatus of a consumer product by a reconfigurable remote control apparatus which can emulate any one of a plurality of transmitters for consumer products such as televisions, video cassette recorders and the like.
Many consumer electronic products such as televisions, video cassette recorders, video disc players, etc. are equipped with hand held infrared remote control transmitters. Each consumer product typically requires its own remote control transmitter due to the fact that the hardware of the electronic product is arranged to accept particular frequencies and codes only. Thus, while the convenience of remote control is well appreciated, confusion often results due to the proliferation of such remote control units. It is therefore desirable to provide a single remote control transmitter for controlling each of several electronic products.
Those skilled in the art will recognize that remote control transmitters provide a code for each key available on the transmitter. In providing a reconfigurable remote control transmitter which can capture the codes of different transmitter, the reconfigurable remote control transmitter must be provided with ample storage for code data. Because of the number of keys on each transmitter and the number of consumer products which are remotely controllable, the data storage requirements would impose a serious burden if the code data were not compressed. Therefore, compression techniques which are capable of substantially compressing obtained code are greatly advantageous.